The Unsettling "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?": A Reaction to Oates's Cultural Commentary

            Only a few stories offer the same level of discomfort and grotesqueness such as Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”. Certainly, I have read my fair share of literature with sinister plots, elements of horror, or uncomfortable depictions of violence and malice. With Oates, however, the text features a creeping sensation, a gradual revelation of a threat. If careless during the first reading of the short story, a person can miss just how perverse and unsettling the images are, as well as the mood. After reading through “‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’ The Grotesque in Oates’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’”, a critical essay, the troubling undertone and symbolism of the story are even more hardened in my mind.

            Of course, the story begins harmlessly enough. Connie is introduced as a bit of a reckless daughter, more desiring to spend her days and nights out feeling alive than with her family or in pursuit of some meaningful occupation. Given the era in which Oates wrote “WAYGWHYB”, the character of Connie may be seen as a fairly archetypal teenager of her time. Many of the standard conventions and philosophies of old America were wearing thin, giving way to liberating, stress-relieving, and often provocative new ideas and interests. By 1974, the Vietnam War was coming to a close, but it had left a nation of youth unsure of authority. Civil rights were a more manifest form of the dismantling of old institutions. Counter culture, including rock and roll, drug usage, and free love had their brief but impactful moment in society. In some sense, all of these new values are bundled into Connie, but Connie comes to represent something more. Connie represents not only an embracing of youthful freedom but a negligence of everything else. The notion I receive from Oates’s text is that Connie seizes upon an electric lifestyle for shallow, selfish amusement, foregoing actual substance or meaning and endangering herself because of this.

            Given that I am in the group tasked with examining the relationship between the character of Arnold Friend and the Devil, my interpretation of “WAYGWHYB” is much more religion-centric. My analysis of Oates’s story is influenced by the concepts of moral and spiritual decay, and seduction by corruptive forces. Such concepts are very applicable to Connie, starting from the first few paragraphs. In the critical essay “‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’ The Grotesque in Oates’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’”, by Joyce M. Wegs, Connie’s carefree attitude is treated as a dangerous quality. Connie does not worship any amiable and constructive god, but rather follows a god of sex, fast cars, and material possessions. Oates portrays Connie’s “moral poverty” by “imaging a typical evening Connie spends at a drive-in restaurant as a grotesquely parodied religious pilgrimage” (Wegs 100). The restraint in the story is “bottle-shaped”, like the steeple of a church, and has a hamburger-laden lad instead of a cross. Within the restaurant, “it is the music which is ‘always in the background, like music at a church service’” (Wegs 100). The irresponsible lifestyle of Connie is paralleled with one of the most innocent lifestyles imaginable: a religious one. However, Connie quickly “discovers that her dream love-god also wears the face of lust, evil, and death” (Wegs 99).

            Still, Connie’s corruption is not truly apparent until Arnold Friend is introduced. After the creepy, supernatural character comes onto the scene, “WAYGWHYB” becomes a much more provocative and eerie depiction of a teenager’s struggle of values and desires. As Wegs notes, “it is no accident that Arnold’s clothes, car, speech, and taste in music reflect current teenage chic almost exactly” (102). Arnold appears in the formal outfit of Connie’s god, but he is rapidly revealed as a foul tempter. Though Connie is nearly swayed at first, finding Arnold Friend to be interesting and mysterious, the creep’s entire existence begins to place Connie on edge, from his sudden arrival out of nowhere to his silent friend to his obviously feigned relaxedness. Arguably, Oates intended to portray Arnold as Satan in disguise, come to lure Connie with her own destructive passions and condemn her to Hell. Friend’s wild hair, almost wig-like, could possibly hide devilish horns, while his discolored neck reveals the likelihood of face make-up. No quality is as convincing of Friend’s demonic nature as his movement, which “may be due to the fact that it must be difficult to manipulate boots if one has cloven feet” (Wegs 103).

            While it is true that I began reading “WAYGWHYB” predisposed to the notion that Arnold Friend is the Devil, I did not anticipate Oates to portray Connie as she did. My initial impression was that Connie would be a hapless, innocent girl horribly taken by some evil force. However, after reading Oates’s story, and after soaking in the ideas presented by Wegs’s critical essay, I now view Connie as a much less innocent individual, though no less unfortunate. Oates certainly seemed to paint a portrait of Connie with some amount of moral depravity and guilt. Ultimately, Connie’s dance with less seemly and beneficial values leads to confrontation with the epitome of sin. Certainly, modern readers may look on Connie and her activities as harmless, the usual pursuits of teenagers everywhere. But, in terms of the 1970s, I think Oates wrote Connie as a much more stark contrast to values of the day, a girl representative of youth’s problems and a fear of what may result of the developing culture. Regardless, I cannot help but feel pity for Connie, and feel a tinge of horror at the subtly sinister, monstrous nature of Arnold Friend.

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Where Are You Going,                  Where Have You Been? Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University    Press, 2002. Print.

Wegs, Joyce M. “‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’ The Grotesque in Oates’s ‘Where Are You        Going, Where Have You Been?’” Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Ed.       Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Print.